The 2024 WCF Golf Croquet World Championship has made it through block play and the playoff (knockout) stage will start at 8:30 eastern time this morning at the Chesapeake Bay Croquet Club near Hartfield, Va.
Yesterday’s final day of block play featured livestreaming from the official USCA YouTube channel for the first time in the event and it is expected that the playoff rounds will also offer livestreaming starting today.
The full bracket for the playoff stage is on croquetscores.com. The first two rounds are supposed to be played today as best-of-three matches and that should have the event down to eight players by tomorrow morning where the final three rounds will be a best-of-five format.
The event has struggled to stay on schedule as the CBCC has officially solved the problem of providing challenging conditions. The Quadways set in solid ground have tormented players going back to the Qualifier. The main event actually opened up the hoop width to shorten game times to keep the event on schedule. Still, the final playoff tiebreaker didn’t conclude until 8:00 p.m. last night, pushing the draw to 10:00 p.m. (originally scheduled for 5:00 p.m.).
The hoops have been reset for the playoffs to 0.8 mm, so it will be interesting to see if game times continue to stretch out. Half of the matches start at 8:30 a.m. and the next half are played afterward.
TODAY’S 8:30 AM starts
Robert Fletcher vs. Timothy Russell
Jose Alvarez-Sala vs. Greg Fletcher
Mohamed Nasr vs. Tamer Hatata
Aston Wade vs. Ben Rothman
Mohamed Karem vs. Jenny Clarke
David Maloof vs. Jose Riva
Sherif Abdelwahab vs. Euan Burridge
Andres Alvarez-Sala vs. Matthew Essick
TODAY’S FOLLOW UP STARTS
Ahmed Nasr vs. Stephen Morgan
Omar Fahmy vs. Thomas Balding
Edmund Fordyce vs. Angharrad Walters
Gary Phipps vs. Khaled Kamel
Reginald Bamford vs. Felix Webby
Brian Lozano vs. Yasser Sayed
Blake Fields vs. Stephen Mulliner
Ahab Abdelwahab vs. Ahmed Elmahdy
BLOCK RESULTS
Robert Fletcher (AUS), Ahmed Elmahdy (EGY), Ben Rothman (USA), Ahmed Nasr (EGY) and Mohamed Karem (EGY) all went undefeated in block play.
